Facing censor trouble

A new Bollywood dark comedy Tere Bin Laden has run into trouble with the Indian censor board. Abhishek Sharma’s Tere Bin Laden produced by Walkwater had problems with the censor board when a certain word in the film happened to sound like a cuss word.
The film-maker was almost about to lose an entire scene.

The scene in question is a comic one where a talking rooster happens to shout the word ‘pencho’ out aloud. This didn’t go down too well with the censor board as it sounded like the parrot was using a cuss word that is derogatory to sisters. It was then that director Abhishek Sharma stepped in and convinced the board that no pun was intended.

A production source reveals, “The censor board had a problem with the word pencho and asked for the scene to be removed. But somehow Abhishek managed to convince them to include the scene making known that pencho is the name of an old artist and that no pun was intended. Taking into consideration the totality of the scene it’s purely funny and doesn’t come across as offensive.”

Tere Bin Laden is a tongue-in-cheek comedy about an ambitious young news reporter from Pakistan played by Ali Zafar who is desperate to migrate to the US in pursuit of the American dream. His repeated attempts to immigrate are shot down as his visa is always rejected. But when things couldn’t look worse he comes across an Osama Bin Laden look alike and how chaos strikes his life.

The informer adds, “The censor took note of Abhishek’s debate. However, the director had to go through a tough time and was almost about to lose one of the most hilarious scenes due to miscommunication.”